Ottawa Citizen Letter to the Editor: Criticisms of Falun Gong just Chinese propaganda

February 02, 2005

January 31, 2005 Monday

Re: Former disciples renounce Falun Gong, Jan. 22.

Canadian practitioners of Falun Gong were deeply shocked and distressed to
see this unfair and irresponsible article from The Associated Press
reprinted in the Citizen.

The AP story gives credibility to Falun Gong denunciation interviews that
were organized by the Chinese government. This is a typical technique of the
regime's propaganda campaign to turn public opinion against Falun Gong.
These interviews were staged by the Chinese government to discredit Falun
Gong, as was the Tiananmen Square self-immolation tragedy on which they are
based.

Instead of providing your readers with fair, well-informed, and trusted
reporting, the Citizen has unwittingly been used to assist the Chinese
government's persecution, causing even greater harm and injustice to those
already being slandered and tortured.

There is third-party supporting documentation, freely accessible in the
Western world, that provides convincing evidence that the self-immolation
incident and the government-organized interviews reported in the AP article
were staged.

The Falun Gong's teachings value life and prohibit suicide and killing, so
it's clearly not accurate to claim that their teachings led to the act of
self-immolation. At the same time, I realize that the people making this
claim are sad victims of the persecution, too.

The news media have a responsibility to investigate and report on the real
stories of these people. I can provide the testimony of Toronto resident
Lizhi He, whose account of his three years of imprisonment in China reveals
the horrors that many practitioners are continuing to suffer.

The truth about the suffering of the tens of thousands still imprisoned and
their family members who yearn for their return must be revealed. These are
the true stories behind the propaganda campaign and government-organized
denunciations.